Business Owners Stand Up to Anti-Freedom Business Bullies

A baker in Massachusetts refuses to sell her dessert pies to people who pay for them with their food stamp card (EBT Card). She maintains that the EBT card should be used for necessities. If they want to purchase desserts, they should use their own money.

The controversy started when the organizers of a farmer’s market wanted all the participants to accept the EBT cards for purchases. Andrea, the owner of the bakery, stated that the farmer’s market “was designed initially to help people who could not afford to put nutritious food on their tables. And there's plenty of that at the farmer's market.” But she sells pies, cakes, and cookies. “My position was that the American taxpayers should not be footing the bill” for desserts.

What started out as a “voluntary program” became pressure to comply.

Massachusetts has a food stamp problem, as do most states. It’s worse than using an EBT card for desserts. “If you are a tax payer in Massachusetts, you get to fund EBT cards for those who want to buy tattoos, manicures, body piercings or porn.” The legislature had the good sense to stop the madness, but it seems that Governor Deval Patrick had other ideas.

“According to the Boston Herald, which first reported the veto, the governor berated the legislature’s stab at banning the purchase of specific items like manicures, tattoos, guns, porn, body piercings, jewelry, and bail by saying the move was ‘political grandstanding’ at a time when such reforms are already on track elsewhere.”

The owner of “Crumb and Get It,” a Virginia bakery, refused to host Vice President Biden because of President Obama’s “You Didn't Build That” comments. The owner said that “he’s hoping folks will understand he just didn't want to be part of a photo op for an administration whose policies he doesn’t agree with.”

Here’s the rest of the story. “Shortly after Crumb and Get It told Biden’s advance people 'no' — the secret service walked in and told Chris McMurray ‘Thanks for standing up and saying no’ — then they bought a whole bunch of cookies and cupcakes.”

In support of the owners, customers flocked to the store. They had so much business that they had to close the store because they “had run out of cookie dough. It reopened a few minutes later, but with a sign in the window noting that only ice cream was being sold.”

A water park owner in Arkansas is standing up to the business bullies. The Wisconsin-based Freedom From Religion Foundation organization has threatened legal action against

Willow Springs Water Park of Little Rock because the owners give a discount to members of churches. The atheist group claims that the discount violates the Civil Rights Act.

Stephanie Schmitt, staff attorney for the atheist group argued the following:

"Any promotions should be available to all customers regardless of religious preference or practice on a non-discriminatory basis. Willow Springs Water Park's restrictive promotional practice favors religious customers, and denies both customers who do not attend church as well as nonbelievers the right to 'full and equal' enjoyment of Willow Springs Water Park.”

My wife and I get a 62-and-older discount at the movie theater near our house. Students also get a discount. Is this discriminatory for non-students and younger people? Military discounts are also popular. Am I being discriminated against because I’ve never been in the military? No one is being discriminated against at the water park. No one is kept from entering.

The Freedom From Religion Foundation didn’t build the park. It’s not their business. If they don’t like the policy of the park, they can build their own and give discounts to atheists.

It’s time that more business owners stand up against the anti-business bullies. If you do, you will be generously rewarded for your efforts and might start a trend that will help turn our nation around.

Bullies are enabled when the bully’s victims don’t fight back. When Ralphie Parker stood up to the bully Scut Farkas in A Christmas Story (1983), he never again had any trouble with the bully.

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Comments

It's interesting to see what is in the cart of people paying for their groceries with food stamps. There always is bakery, usually chips of one sort or another, candy and soda. I have even seen cigarettes although the person did hand over a little cash. Now with even a muffin from the bakery costing $1.00 each, which I cannot afford, and cigarettes at between $75 and $80 in our area, what the H are these people doing getting food stamps? The sad part is that these people get away with it. I not only think the Mass. person refusing to accept food stamps for her pies not only is right, everyone should be refusing to use food stamps for anything that is not nourishing fruits, vegetables, cereals, meats etc. I might be able to overlook a little something from the bakery but, it really bothers me when I see cigarettes being bought with food stamps.

Del45

I agree wholeheartedly.There is so much fraud with food stamps and, we the taxpayers, are paying for it.

LeSellers

Food Stamps (or SNAP, or whatever the blue blazes they're calling it this week) is fraud from the gitgo.

If the government is going to take over the job of churches and fraternal organizations, they need to restrict it to flour, salt, beans, cheese, and hamburger (not even patties, just old fashioned ground beef). If the poor want to live like the rich, then they need to do something about it.

Okeh, oatmeal and corn meal, too. Maybe milk.

Mr. O'bama, where are the Jobs?

http://www.lewrockwell.com/ Tuci78

Another problem with federal food aid is the fact that the "approved" products list seems to be populated by brand names, which tend to be a good deal more costly than generic or "store" brands.

This is just a little bit nuts, isn't it? I've seen people trying to get the most out of their food assistance expenditures to obtain real staples - not luxury items but the "bare bones" stuff - with which to make meals for their families, and they're obliged to go back to the shelves and pick alternatives that soak up a greater dollar amount.

Can anybody explain why this should be so? -

frenchrabbit

My son was on food stamps for a very short time (necessary). He used coupons and was able to get more then he needed. By learning to utilize coupons with sales, he was able to eat a very healthy diet and have money left over every month. He was even able to get better cuts of meat then he could have otherwise. Maybe the government should require a couponing course.

I've heard much noise about putting food assistance recipients through "nutrition" courses pushing the dieticians' orthodoxies about food groups and such, but never anything of immediate practical applicability - and always so doggone boring!

Who could blame people for zoning out and never remembering what had been so earnestly droned over them?

But "a couponing course" is flippin' brilliant.

DontTreadOnMe11

You're going to force them to take nutrition and couponing courses? You can't even force them to take mandatory drug tests!

http://www.lewrockwell.com/ Tuci78

Yes! "Ess, ess, mein Kind, für Führer, Volk, und Vaterland!"

Mitt dem coupons, ja!

DontTreadOnMe11

Was Mitt, a play on words?

http://www.lewrockwell.com/ Tuci78

Nein! Der Magikal Mystery Mormon isn't really "mitt" it, nicht wahr?

You just know that if he does manage not to screw the proverbial pooch come November, Willard the Wussy will never so much as unseal the records to expose our Fraudulence-in-Chief as the flaming criminal we so truly know him to be.

With that "good hair" topping that empty skull, the Etch-A-Sketch is a committed party to that "gentleman's agreement" between the Republicans and the National Socialist Democrat American Party (NSDAP), in which nobody pursues the other guys' felonies.

And Jon Corzine doesn't get prosecuted for what he did to "disappear" his clients' money at MF Global.

Nothing to see here, yokels. Move along, move along....

DontTreadOnMe11

The only reason I asked was because I thought it was spelled "mit" not with 2 t's

http://www.lewrockwell.com/ Tuci78

Ach, zo! Well, I'm chust a verdammte Italianer with only ein jahr of Kraut 101 im Gymnasium back during the Eisenhower Administration.

I get by well enough to get a medical history in Spanish, conduct a physical examination, and write prescriptions in spite of the way the Sicilian seeps through. Haven't had a German-speaking patient in better'n thirty years.

DontTreadOnMe11

I am of Italian descent also. Ciao, amico.

liberalism

Clearly you've never smoked, so you don't understand what a terrible addition it is. Why are you so mean spirited? You are forcing them into a life a crime to steal cigs if they can't get them by legal means. (tongue in cheek)

frenchrabbit

Smoking is a choice......suffer the consequences or make better choices.

http://www.lewrockwell.com/ Tuci78

Truth. Yeah, nicotine is - microgram for microgram - the most addictive substance known to pharmacology.

But people do "kick the habit," proving that it can be done.

http://www.facebook.com/people/David-Peacock/100001241183282 David Peacock

bummer/biden have no idea what is store for them in November 2012.

http://www.lewrockwell.com/ Tuci78

They don't see it coming because they don't intend to let it happen.

It's the Chicago way, Mr. Peacock. Vote the cemeteries, vote the dog pound, vote the pigeons in the park, but never let the citizens vote you out.

LeSellers

The Joe Stalin School of Democracy: It doesn't matter who votes, what matters is who COUNTS the votes.

On the other hand (I hope there is another hand): "If it's not close, they can't steal it.

Mr. O'bama, where are the Jobs?

http://www.lewrockwell.com/ Tuci78

I'd call it "the Cook County Machine School of Corruption."

Many times it's been observed that when a dictatorship comes to America, it'll be wrapped in the flag, whistling the national anthem, and propping its filthy feet up on the Resolute desk in the Oval Office.

I pray so...I also pray we don't get screwed with Romney. Word has it Romney/Ryan won't be doing anything to reverse Obama's little illegal Dream Scheme. That's very disappointing. This, among other things that he/they may not tackle and wipe out of Obama's damage makes me very unsettled.

http://www.lewrockwell.com/ Tuci78

Too late. You've been"screwed with Romney," and those of us who've supported Dr. Ron Paul told you so. Repeatedly. For the past five years.

Don'tcha know that an east coast RINO like Willard Mittney hasn't got the guts to "tackle" a beachball rolling through his living room?

The way things work is that they pretend to give us a choice, and we pretend what they're shoving down our throats doesn't make us want to break out the hangman's nooses and decorate the lampposts all over downtown Washington.

One way or the other, the fictions are going to end.

Guess which will come first?

siquijorisland

Are you a magician? How is that you want us to believe you know so much, that may not be true

http://www.lewrockwell.com/ Tuci78

Bah. Chalk it up to experience, not legerdemain.

Back in '64, we were calling clowns like Willard the Wussy "Rockefeller Republicans" and watching them sabotage Barry Goldwater's campaign.

With "friends" of this sort, you've got a knife sticking out of your back before the fight with your other opponents has even begun. -

Ron Paul has got some interesting ideas, and I hope those in the New Congress will see the benefit in these proposals and implement...however, Ron isn't my first choice....Romney has more experience in the area our Country needs to go right now. Ron has been in Washington too long also, and no doubt would have been much better than Obama in 2008....but new problems require new direction and Ron isn't the man for the job! Maybe his Son will be in the future but not right now. Both have made some great decisions in getting the Feds audited, etc. and hopefully we'll get rid of various agencies like the Department of Education...so we don't have duplication in services at both the Fed and State levels.

Jobs are needed. Jobs can turn everything around..jobs are a great source of income for both States and Federal Governments. Private sector Jobs...not Government! We Need Government to get out of the Way!! Free Enterprise will work if Government gets out of the way and allows the market (consumers) to balance its own

siquijorisland

who is putting out this word the Obama team

http://www.lewrockwell.com/ Tuci78

Nope. The "Liberal" fascist thugs fear and hate anybody who has even the most remote prospect of displacing them in the positions of power they jealously covet, even Romney, but of all the opponents they could have faced in this election, they knew him to be the most vulnerable.

Why the hell else d'you think that their sniveling monkeys in the lamestream media kept pumping the Massachusetts Mormon Mamzer as "the presumptive Republican nominee" ever since the 2008 election came to a close?

They've figured him as a typical specimen of east coast Republican "establishment" kakistocracy, a silver-spoon-sucking "go along to get along" RINO whom every core constituency in the Red Faction voter base hates with a passion, and with good reason.

With all the damage done to our economy by the Kenyan Keynesian (which the National Socialists knew he was going to do; the laws of economics are as well understood by those thoroughly corrupt ratbags as they are by the equally ratbag Republicans), they needed and were determined to engineer a Republican "choice" who was in absolutely no way a choice at all.

In their eyes, at best the Romnhoid would run a completely flaccid campaign, and what we've seen thus far in his classic "deer in the headlamps" non-response to our Chicago Goon's Alinsky campaign of lies and character assassination proves that they were correct. It sure as hell ain't likely that the Etch-A-Sketch is going to suddenly grow a spine - Paul Ryan as a strap-on notwithstanding - between now and November. It's just not this might-as-well-be-a-"Liberal" clothes horse's style.

The things that could be done to devastate the Indonesian's run for re-election you can be assured that Willard Mittney will not do. He will not demand that Stanley Ann's Little Indiscretion unseal his personal records - including those academic records that detail the financial assistance he got at Occidental College, Columbia University, and Harvard Law. He will not hammer the "crony capitalism" corruption that has raddled the illegitimate administration of our Fraudulence-in-Chief, particularly when it comes to absolutely ruinous, intrinsically impracticable and Enronically crooked "alternative energy" and "green jobs" boondoggles.

And above all else, he will not pursue Operation Fast and Furious, a matter of policy arrived at in our Mombasa Messiah's own Oval Office, concealed desperately by the most flagrant misuse of Executive Privilege (what the hell?) in U.S. history, and amounting to nothing more or less than an offense against international law which should by rights result in all the senior members of the Obama Administration being hauled off to the International Criminal Court at the Hague like a covey of Serbian mass murderers.

None of this will Romney or his handlers so much as mention anywhere they might get caught speaking.

As for that ludicrously idiotic forgery of a "long-form birth certificate" frantically issued in April 2011 in a futile effort to forestall Corsi's detailed expose of our Miracle Mystery Mulatto's decidedly shaky qualification even to have run for the public office he infests, does anybody reading here think that the bland and pointless putz stumbling along to the RNC is ever going to so much as hum the tune, much less sing the words required to engage the American public in the pursuit of this constellation of felonies that would - in the hands of a genuine opponent of "Liberal" fascism - stamp "NULL & VOID" over the reign of our POTUS-With-an-Asterisk?

I repeat: the Republican "establishment" has offered us the illusion of a choice that's never been any kind of genuine choice at all.

And the average self-identified Republican voter is just bending over to present his nether parts, kinda sorta hoping for Vaseline this time.

Gad. -

"If there were a generic one-word expression for 'one whose fear of the uncertainties of success moves him to surrender at the very moment of victory', it would be 'Republican'." [L. Neil Smith]

http://pulse.yahoo.com/_Y6LE5GJQNKBUMSIWBTG2LMPFH4 Douglas

Gad you have got to start reading your history more and your own words less. The truth is all damage done to the American people has been the direct result of Democrats in Congress. When the Democrats have control of the Congress we all get screwed...get history. The Food stamp situation in Mass. Democrats....everything gone wrong in this country is due to Democrats in control.

Republicans establish direction and the Democrats find ways around them and we have problems. Romney is an excellent businessman with a real history of turning businesses around, Ryan has a sound draft in getting our Nation a budget...for the first time in 3 years and 9 months (again no budget first time in history thanks to Democrat control Senate),

Another 4 years of Obama and we will be on Food Stamps, in Government Housing, and under the control of Obama and his gang of crooks. No Doubt...history has shown us he is not capable of handling the position he has been placed in...it is way over his head...and if you don't see this truth with unemployment at average of 8.3% National Average. Gas Prices due to restrictions on permits and exploration in America...Chinese have purchased most of Canada's sand oil...check it out! Food prices 3 times higher, and the list goes on! Your friend in Washington is a waste of 3 years and 9 months.

We need better than Obama, and Romney and Ryan is what America and the American people need!

Nadine

I live in MA. & the EBT situation is our of control! Some things are banned now, like trips to Hawaii!! (GO FIGURE!) I remember long ago being on Food stamps & so imbarrassed that I'd wait till no one was around! These abusers make it hard for the people who REALLY need it! I agree with the woman refusing to sell a $17 pie (that I can't afford) to an EBT user! She has the right to sell to whoever she wants! Thing is..they take the EBT card, go get cash & then buy it! Somethings got to change, cause I want my tax $$ to go to the NEEDY not the GREEDY!!

DontTreadOnMe11

They sell the EBT cards on the street for as little as 25 cents on the dollar.

http://www.lewrockwell.com/ Tuci78

Gad. Used to be that George Carlin could get a laugh about a guy getting arrested "...for using food stamps to mail a watermelon."

My grandkids hear that bit on the old album and it just soars right over their little noggins.

DontTreadOnMe11

Yeah, like the seven words you couldn't say on TV.

http://www.lewrockwell.com/ Tuci78

Hmph. Those don't even impress the seven-year-old.

She's heard them on TV.

I'm waiting for Grover to start showing prison tattoos, and for Bert and Ernie to finally come out and visit city hall for a marriage license. -

CMY

Bullies have been around a long time... It is time for all of them to grow up, mature, and get a job. Mind their own business for once in their lives...

deeme

People have no pride anymore , they almost wear it as a badge in your face, look what you are paying for , for me..I want to help the truly needy , the sad thing is, they don't even know how to go about getting the help they need, while the scammers are taking over..

http://www.lewrockwell.com/ Tuci78

Still and all, there are a bunch of folks on government food aid - WIC as well as food stamps - and my personal experience with a lot of them gives me subjectively and with the limitation of purely empirical information to conclude that most are not"scammers" but rather people in real need.

A proper understanding of political economics leads to the understanding that what is called the business cycle is always, invariably, inevitably, and inescapably the result of currency manipulation perpetrated by the officers of our federal government, by the Federal Reserve System, and by the "connected" bankers and other financial system manipulators exploiting those connections to pillage their clients and everybody else.

It's not "conspiracy theory" when you've got enough solid information on the phenomenon to voice your diagnosis with robust certainty.

Snarling at the recipients of food stamps is like griping about how somebody's blood on the floor keeps sticking to your shoes instead of blaming the assailant who shot those people. -

Boogies Daddy

My experience with many people on WIC as well as food stamps leaves me with the opposite observation: Most are abusing the system to one degree or another.

deeme

There are a whole bunch of us who have lived within our means without asking for handouts when times were tough, so tough five of us were packed in a Courrier pickup truck..so tough we didn't have cell phones, computers, cable, or any of the other things people now can't live without..These people are everywhere with groceries packed to the top iphones and expensive tennis shoes..and yes there is proof of this everywhere ..no conspiracy theory..just opening my eyes to the facts ..http://tomohalloran.com/?page_id=2361

http://www.lewrockwell.com/ Tuci78

Many of us old enough to remember the Truman Administration can remember tough times, and most Americans of sufficient age also learned from our parents the stubborn, stiff-necked determination of those "too poor to paint and too proud to whitewash."

This understood, the continuing degradation of the U.S. dollar - begun in the first administration of FDR and going off the cliff in 1971 with the Nixon Shock - leaves Americans generally (for all the iPhones and the rest of that junk) in a condition potentially far more perilous than ever before.

We've had catastrophic currency inflation in the past decade, accelerated beyond the average American's ability to understand or even believe during the reign of our Kenyan Keynesian. Do you, deeme, understand what "Quantitative Easing" actually is? Do you understand why the Federal Reserve quit reporting the M3 - the empirical measure of the "money" supply best capable of reflecting real currency debauchment - in 2006?

For all the "welfare queen" types about which the various media clowns grab eyeballs, there are plenty of native-born American citizens who are screwed out of productive employment - either as wage-earners or small business owners - by an economic environment attributable entirely to the malfeasances of government officers as a matter of articulated federal policy.

Something this bad, this big, doesn't happen for no reason, and screwing up the "money" supply is the root cause of the whole bloody mess.

The life preservers they're clinging to are not why the water is rising to flood levels. -

TheTruthWillSetYouFree

It is sad some liberals (progressives) really do not understand so they treat the symptoms (print more money, Bail outs & deficits) not realizing the more money printed is based on real money (gold) The price of Gold has risen dramatically this is the true indication of the state of the economy...at $1600+ an ounce it reflects what the dollar is really worth if you remember when all the gold was confiscated by FDR this was the beginning of the massive devaluation of the dollar it was $32 an ounce so you can really see how much the dollar has been devalued

http://www.lewrockwell.com/ Tuci78

The price of gold has not"risen dramatically." The weights of precious metals have simply retained their value with a consistency that might surprise you (yet another reason to support Dr. Ron Paul, who has kept making this point in the Congress throughout his thirty years of service there) while the U.S. Federal Reserve Note "dollar" has been robbed of its purchasing power through the machinations of the secretive scum running the Fed.

The cheering fact about money - real money - is that you can't "print more" of it. You've got to mine it out of the ground and strike it into coins, making it a commodity-based medium of exchange capable of serving as an objective measure of purchasing power, retaining its value over time.

Today, the U.S. dollar is not even remotely based on any kind of specie - silver or gold. The Coinage Act of 1965 began the issue of base-metal tokens to replace silver coins (dimes, quarters, half-dollars, one-dollar pieces) in circulation, and the Nixon Shock of 1971 completely divorced the U.S. dollar from even the fiction of specie payment.

You want unspeakable arrogance on the part of an incompetent goon masquerading as President of these United States? Look at Richard Milhous Nixon sometime. Before Stanley Ann's Little Incomplete Abortion slimed into the White House, he was - Carter notwithstanding - the worst chief executive our republic had suffered in the latter half of the 20th Century.

To know him is to hate him, I assure you.

Rest assured that most - purely nominal - conservatives don't understand the concept of currency debauchment, else we wouldn't have a designated Republican candidate for the vice-presidency who'd bleated out an impassioned plea for TARP a few years ago.

Ryan ain't no gift of grace to the American political scene by any stretch of the imagination.

http://www.facebook.com/williekmcd Bill Mcdonald

And yet more blah blah blah

http://www.lewrockwell.com/ Tuci78

Oh, goodie. And yet more blank driveling Mcdonaldianism.

I do like having my contentions so conscientiously proven correct. -

"...stupid is as stupid does." [screenplay, Forrest Gump (1994)]

http://www.facebook.com/williekmcd Bill Mcdonald

Blah blah blah..

http://www.lewrockwell.com/ Tuci78

Oh, good. You're working within your IQ. -

"...we'll be saying a big hello to all intelligent life forms everywhere ... and to everyone else out there, the secret is to bang the rocks together, guys." [Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy]

http://www.facebook.com/williekmcd Bill Mcdonald

Where is the ignore button for this drone?

http://www.lewrockwell.com/ Tuci78

You don't get one, schmucklet.

Why not follow Luther's admonition, and "...tear the yes out of [your] Reason"?

You don't like what I post? Just don't read it. You're sure as hell not trying to reply to my observations and well-supported argument.

http://www.lewrockwell.com/ Tuci78

Speaking as an atheist, I've got to observe that Willow Springs Water Park is a private enterprise, not a government agency.

"You didn't build that" horsepuckey notwithstanding, my atheist property wasn't involved in building or operating their water park, and they can offer whatever discounts suit their taste any time they bleeding well choose.

If they announce a promotion to give free admission to identical twins, should all of us singletons take that as bigotry against us?

If they offer free cotton candy to the first 100 children who show up wearing a bubblegum-pink clothing item, should those of us who dress our kids in blue jeans and white shirts gripe?

I think the religious whackjobs are a divisive force in civil society when they insist upon government policy ramming their idiocies down the throats of people who don't share their beliefs. This notwithstanding, they're both service providers and customers in our marketplace, and I want that market kept free for all who respect the rights of others in their participation.

Laissez-faire. -

Tomk777

Everyone believes in a religion, Athiests are just too stupid or ignorant to know their beliefs constitute one. You don't need a deity to have religious beliefs, the difference is their world view and beliefs about human behavior don't reconcile with reality.

http://www.lewrockwell.com/ Tuci78

Yeah, I've heard that "atheism is a religion, too" garbage. Don't you godstruck gophers ever get anything remotely resembling a new idea?

It's a waste of time arguing reasonably with any clown who predicates his every burble on an appeal to the ineffable, but to have "religious beliefs" a person has to concede some kind of acknowledgement of the supernatural - some entity or force beyond even the possibility of objective verification - and in rejecting that whole silly concept, the atheist's position is simply "If you ain't got proof, you ain't got nothin' and that's it."

That's supposed to qualify the atheist as having "religious beliefs"?

In your fantasies, friend.

Which is where you get all your values, right? -

Tomk777

You have no "proof" there isn't a God as well, which means your views costatute a religion just as much as mine, and just where do you get your values? What you " feel" to be right? How do you KNOW your values aren't based on your own fantasies? Especially when as humans, we're capable of lying to our selves? Your swimming in a sea of lies, calling the only thing true, a lie

http://www.lewrockwell.com/ Tuci78

Tsk. Godstruck gophers ruining the lawn everywhere.

Ever heard of the concept called "burden of proof" at any point in what we'll laughingly call your "education"?

The atheist doesn't have to prove a negative ("There is no god") because in logic - savvy "logic"? - that's known to be an impossibility.

Now, where I get my values is not relevant to the discussion of deities, and that's just another deist distraction common to you geomyidiform jerks. There appears to be robust among you supernaturalists an unthought assumption that without the fear of some kind of omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, and supposedly omnibenevolent (?) Magnificent Stomper to keep you and your confreres trembling in terror, you'd all be raping chipmunks, carving each other up with machetes, and broiling second-graders for breakfast.

Not that you wouldn't, of course. Religious whackjobs keep proving themselves to be unstable, don't they?

It's pretty simple to found a moral code on observed phenomena common to all human beings, who survive by dint of their ability to observe, to examine that information reasonably, and then act on the basis thereof. This leaves us with the Enlightenment philosophers' appreciation of the critical negative individual rights to life, to liberty, and to property, all of which need to be respected in our daily conduct in order to enable us to live in and benefit from the society of our fellow human beings.

Otherwise we end up looting, raping, enslaving, and/or killing each other, and that's no way to run a civilization, is it?

Religious beliefs don't enter into it. Neither does how you "feel," and in this regard (as in so much else in this real physical world of ours) do your fantasies, religious or otherwise.

Sure, there's always the potential for self-deception, for "lying to our selves." That's why objective reality - that which can be proven to exist, using reproducible methods of investigation - is a more reliable standard of value than anything predicated upon religious beliefs.

Which cannot be verified. Heck, how can a religious whackjob know for sure that the religious whackjob standing right next to him in his house of worship really believes in precisely the same things that whackjob of the first part imagines he does?

Talk about building castles in the clouds....

Tomk777

Of the two of us, only one has resorted to name calling, only one of us has felt the need to degrade the other, and only one has deluded him self into believing that everything he believes has been proven using reproducible methods of investigation.

http://www.lewrockwell.com/ Tuci78

Aw, now you're whining about how I'm supposedly not treating you politely.

When we Whackjobs try to tell others about what we believe it's not that we're trying to push our beliefs onto others (well, okay, some may) but for most of us it's because of what we believe/know will happen to those non-believers when they die here on earth... eternal damnation, which isn't just partying with your friends in a really hot place... but terrible terrible suffering forEVER. In other words, if I'M wrong, I've still had a wonderful, happy, and productive life and then it'll be over. If YOU'RE wrong, you're going to have a really nasty surprise when you die. And you know what? Although I don't know you, you seem to want to do the right things in life. So, if you really want to know the truth, try this little experiment: tonight, when you're by yourself, no TV or other distraction, try asking God if He's real. You don't have to be eloquent, just ask Him.

http://www.lewrockwell.com/ Tuci78

Egad, now we've got a gopher professing her rodent religious beliefs as if they were valid bases for decision-making in the real world.

Look, Ms. Wright, what you aver to "believe/know" will happen to those who don't hew to your peculiar hallucinations about how the Magnificent Stomper is gonna be really, really cheesed off at them has objective support to precisely the same extent as have the howling imprecations of the whackjob mullahs of Iran, or their equally whackjob rivals of the Sunni sect over in Saudi Arabia (both groups presently continuing centuries of efforts to persecute their fellow Muslims to death; some "religion of peace").

Anyone capable of lucid reasoning is supposed to give any more weight to your heartfelt feelings than to the sentiments expressed in Farsi and in Arabic by those robed and bearded Qur'an-thumpers?

And now you're trying to whip out the old Pascal's Wager gambit as if a conscientious literate atheist - Jesuit-trained no less - hasn't heard of that silliness before?

(Actually, I kinda wish death were just "a nasty surprise." I've been clinically dead a couple of times, and it wasn't really all that bad. Just, y'know, nothing.)

1. The existence of a god, if we are to believe in it, can only be established through reason.

2. Applying the canons of correct reasoning to theistic belief, we must reach the conclusion that theism is unfounded and must be rejected by rational people.

Now comes the question, "But what if reason is wrong in this case?", which it sometimes is. We are fallible human beings. What if it turns out that there is a Christian god and He's up there and He's going to punish us for eternity for disbelieving in Him. Here's where my wager comes in. Let's suppose you're an atheist. What are the possibilities? The first possibility is there is no god, you're right. In that case, you'll die, that'll be it, you've lost nothing, and you've lived a happy life with the correct position. Secondly, a god may exist but he may not be concerned with human affairs. He may be the god of traditional Deism. He may have started the universe going and left it to its traditional devices, in which case you will simply die, that is all there is to it, again, and you've lost nothing.

Let's suppose that God exists and He is concerned with human affairs - He's a personal god - but that He is a just god. He's concerned with justice. If you have a just god, He could not possibly punish an honest error of belief where there is no moral turpitude or no wrongdoing involved. If this god is a creator god and He gave us reason as the basic means of understanding our world, then He would take pride in the conscientious and scrupulous use of reason on the part of His creatures, even if they committed errors from time to time, in the same way a benevolent father would take pride in the accomplishments of his son, even if the son committed errors from time to time. Therefore, if there exists a just god, we have absolutely nothing to fear from such a god. Such a god could not conceivably punish us for an honest error of belief.

Now we came to the last possibility. Suppose there exists an unjust god, specifically the god of Christianity, who doesn't give a damn about justice and who will burn us in Hell, regardless of whether we made honest mistakes or not. Such a god is necessarily unjust, for there is no more heinous injustice we could conceive of, than to punish a person for an honest error of belief, when he has tried to the best of his ability to ascertain the truth. The Christian thinks he's in a better position in case this kind of god exists. I wish to point out that he's not in any better position than we are because if you have an unjust god. The earmark of injustice is unprincipled behavior, behavior that's not predictable. If there's an unjust god and He really gets all this glee out of burning sinners and disbelievers, then what could give him more glee than to tell Christians they would be saved, only to turn around and burn them anyway, for the Hell of it, just because he enjoys it? If you've got an unjust god, what worst injustice could there be than that? It's not that far-fetched. If a god is willing to punish you simply for an honest error of belief, you can't believe He's going to keep his word when He tells you He won't punish you if you don't believe in Him because He's got to have a sadistic streak to begin with. Certainly He would get quite a bit of glee out of this behavior. Even if there exists this unjust god, then admittedly we live in a nightmarish universe, but we're in no worse position than the Christian is.

Oh, dear.... you are getting quite a bit of glee out of perversity, aren't you? Actually, none of the 'god-scenarios' you listed is correct. God is both loving and just. He is also Holy, and cannot allow any sin to enter heaven. We are all born sinners... "we're not sinners because we sin, but we sin because we're sinners". All you have to do to know sin is innate is to watch a 2-year old defying his parents... they didn't have to teach him that. (And yes, I'm quite sure you have a clever answer for that, too.)

Since every single one of us is a sinner, no matter how hard we try we cannot get to heaven on our own. That's the bad news. The Good News is that He sent Jesus, who is not only God the Son, but also came as a man, fully human. As a human, Jesus was the only man who never sinned. When He died on the cross, as the perfect human He took our sins on Him, so IF we accept the fact that we're sinners, repent, and ask Him to live in us and direct our lives, God then sees Jesus in us instead of our sin. (However, I suspect that as a "Jesuit trained" atheist you already know this and have rejected it, for whatever reason.) You know, Hell wasn't created for us, but for Satan and his demons... and it's not a case of questioning why a loving God would send us to such a horrible place, but why wouldn't He? We haven't done anything to earn a way into heaven, but we've all certainly done a lot to earn our way into hell, the chief one being putting other gods before him.

Interestingly enough, many Muslims are coming to know Jesus as their savior. He's coming to them in dreams, and they're converting in droves. I understand that you don't want to ask God to prove Himself, I'm just not sure of the reason behind your refusal.

I like your quote from The Ruling Class... very funny.

http://www.lewrockwell.com/ Tuci78

Tsk. So "God is both loving and just. He is also Holy, and cannot allow any sin to enter heaven. We are all born sinners..." which proves Mr. Smith's point. The Christian deity even as you envision him, Ms. Wright, is neither loving nor just, "doesn't give a damn about justice and who will burn us in Hell, regardless of whether we made honest mistakes or not."

This is because he "cannot allow any sin to enter heaven," even if the "sin" consists in nothing more than honest thought and action on the basis of the honest exercise of the human being's reasoning faculties.

Are you perhaps of the Lutheran heresy, Ms. Wright? There's that great quote from Martin Luther, who in Table Talk wrote: -

"Reason [which he elsewhere calls "die höchste Hur, die der Teufel hat" ("the greatest whore that the Devil has")] is the greatest enemy that faith has: it never comes to the aid of spiritual things, but - more frequently than not - struggles against the divine Word, treating with contempt all that emanates from God.

- He also wrote: -

"Reason should be destroyed in all Christians."

...and:

"Whoever wants to be a Christian should tear the eyes out of his Reason." - And I used to think that all those hours of comparative theology back in high school were wasted. I shoulda known.

As for your "two-year-old defying his parents," it's no more a manifestation of "sin" - "innate" or otherwise - than is a modern American citizen discerning the unconstitutionality of our Occupier-in-Chief's criminal reign of error and speaking his appreciation thereof. Loudly and angrily.

For the two-year-old, it's the beginning of sapience and the appreciation of his own best perceptions of the self as something other than an appendage of his parents. He may be in error as to his capacities and his readiness for autonomy, but he's not in "sin."

As for Muslims converting to Christianity, I count them as making a wise decision. Islam is not a religion for even marginally sane people who want to leave in peace with other human beings - even (as I'd observed) fellow Muslims.

Apostasy, however, is a crime punishable by death under Islamic law, so I strongly suggest that these newly converted Christians get themselves armed and prepared to kill in self-defense, or get themselves out of countries governed under Sharia. Turning the other cheek under such circumstances will only get 'em killed.

The rest of your post consists of unsupported and unsupportable assertions right up there with the Tooth Fairy, the Easter Bunny, Santa Claus, and the Honest "Liberal."

Well, in answer to your last question... not much. And no... I'm not a Lutheran, as far as belonging to a church of that denomination, but I am Protestant, as you so cleverly deduced... must be from all that comparative theology you sat through... and I don't have anything against him, as you obviously do. You in fact seem to have something against everyone. Is there anyone you like or admire? Anyone?

Sigh... I guess I'll just do what the others on this posting have done with you... quit. I give up. Trying to dialogue with you is like trying to nail Jell-O to the wall. You back up your assertions with quotes from other people... most of whom are so obscure I had to look them up... as if they have the absolute last say on any matter, and then you go on to the next topic willy-nilly, excoriating me and my beliefs with a vitriol that takes over the conversation, obliterating it under a smoking slime.

I'm sure that now you're smirking about how I'm 'whining'. No, you're certainly welcome to spread as much nastiness around as you wish, I just don't feel like dealing with it any more.

http://www.lewrockwell.com/ Tuci78

Feh. I pull quotations because I'm aware that other people have said things eloquently, and I'm neither going to take credit for the apt and praiseworthy things they'd written nor fail to point out the viciousness of established pillars of systematized authoritarianism. Martin Luther was up against a corrupt and even murderous Roman Catholic Church, but he was himself a thoroughly nasty character with the hatred of innocent human beings we tend to find in all fanatics, religious or secular.

As for the various Protestant sects and schisms and idiosyncratic splinter groups, keeping 'em straight requires more research than I'm inclined to go into nowadays. Calvinist, Lutheran, Presbyterian, "high church," "low church," Hussite, Mennonite, fuhgeddaboutit. Might as well try to memorize all the different kinds of cheeses over which the French obsess. To quote Heinlein, "One man's theology is another man's belly laugh."

As for who I "like or admire," there's not much problem. In politics, the only man who's worth a damn is an OB/GYN guy I met at a convention a couple of decades ago, name of Ron Paul. Sound grasp of economic theory and practice, preternaturally accurate perception of the political problems plaguing our republic, precisely appropriate proposals for remediative solutions, and not a hound's chance in hell of overcoming the stinking corruption that imbues our federal and state governments the way the bubonic plague spread over Europe in the 14th Century.

Remember, you Republicans: you had the chance to nominate him in 2008 and again this year, and you let your "leadership" sell you Crash Test Johnnie McCain (the spoiled brat of an Admiral's son who never did grow into a fit condition to take responsibility much less exercise authority) and the Etch-A-Sketch, each of them conservatives in name only.

Don't wonder about "vitriol," Ms. Wright. Offer pearls often enough over the decades to have them rejected repeatedly, and the conclusion that you're dealing with swine becomes absolutely bulletproof.

Oh, and your "beliefs." To quote yet again from Heinlein: -

"The great trouble with religion — any religion — is that a religionist, having accepted certain propositions by faith, cannot thereafter judge those propositions by evidence. One may bask at the warm fire of faith or choose to live in the bleak uncertainty of reason — but one cannot have both."

-

Positing the value of "beliefs" - wholly subjective and intrinsically without susceptibility even to common understanding among co-religionists - is no way to "dialogue" with any person who insists upon the connection between minds which can only be established by way of rational explanation and reasoned understanding.

The True Believer (and need I quote Hoffer here?) represents to the American determined to preserve and strengthen the rule of law in our republic a capriciously unreliable associate, and a truly nervous-making ally. One never knows where the godstruck will be "guided" by hard-held articles of faith which bring him enthusiastically to advocate now the benevolent, later the preposterous, and perhaps at some future time the psychotic.

I hew to the bare and absolutely uncontroversial simplicity of individual human rights - life, liberty, and property - and I hold "that no one has the right, under any circumstances, to initiate force against another human being, or to advocate or delegate its initiation."

It's called the non-aggression principle. It doesn't require isolation or non-intercourse, but it does oblige me to keep my meddling hands out of your affairs - even for what I construe to be "your own good" - unless you give your permission.

I want civil government in our communities, in our statehouses, and in our federal republic run along the same lines.

Do you?

frenchrabbit

If you only have values out of religious fear, are those real values? Go to heaven and do everything you are against here on earth.......serve as a slave to GOD. Do his bidding, for eternity! Why do you not love Obama then? All he wants is for you to follow "on Earth as it is in Heaven" with him as the GOD figure. Then he will take care of you with the evil rich peoples money.

frenchrabbit

Keep drinking the kool-ade. Atheist are people who do not believe in a supreme being. Has nothing to do with man made religion.

There are a lot of non-religious conservatives/capitalists/private enterprise believers (Ayn Rand was one, certainly) but you will find very few religious liberals/socialists, mostly because God's laws reinforce that we each should work for what we receive, yet have a personal responsibility (not a government's edict) toward those who are weaker. It's the liberals who want to force government policy down the throats of people who 'don't share their beliefs'. It's the liberals who keep making laws to protect people from themselves for their own good. (See Mayor Bloomberg.) It's the liberals who think those who produce goods should pay at a higher tax rate (see O.W.S., Michael Moore, President Obama, etc.).

These 'religious' folks you seem to think are so divisive also believe that it is wrong to murder an innocent child whether in the womb or out, it is wrong to make animals more important than humans, it is wrong to take something from one person and give to another, and it isn't we humans who control the climate, it's God. The laws that are in effect regarding these things were rammed down the throats of Christians who 'don't share their beliefs'.

Del45

Very well stated Cathy.

http://www.lewrockwell.com/ Tuci78

One doesn't have to approve of the "Liberals" (milk-and-water socialists economically, normative nanny-state clowns socially, and fascists generally) in order to oppose the religious whackjobs who translate their beliefs into statute law so as to grind down upon their neighbors conduct more pleasing to the godstruck.

The binary solution set isn't between social conservatives and "Liberal" fascists, but rather between people willing to live and let live - laissez faire - and those who are so certain in their rectitude that they can find all sorts of excuses for imposing their One Way at gunpoint. -

"Political tags — such as royalist, communist, democrat, populist, fascist, liberal, conservative, and so forth — are never basic criteria. The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire. The former are idealists acting from highest motives for the greatest good of the greatest number. The latter are surly curmudgeons, suspicious and lacking in altruism. But they are more comfortable neighbors than the other sort." [Robert A. Heinlein]

So name one law that those 'divisive religious whackjobs' have imposed on you... at 'gunpoint', no less.

http://www.lewrockwell.com/ Tuci78

On me personally? "Blue laws" forbidding certain types of commerce on Sundays springs immediately to mind (how come not on the Jewish sabbath, and on Friday, the Islamic day of worship?). Censorship generally and variably.

Then there are those constant religious whackjob efforts to get "creation science" (?) taught as part of the science curricula in taxpayer-funded government-run schools is another one.

Look, I had a parochial school education from start to finish, all elements duly approved by the Diocese along lines prescribed by the Curia, and not even back in the early '50s were the nuns screwed-up enough to teach Religion during Science classes.

I've got no problem teaching kids comparative theology and history of religion in any school, including the government's educationalist gulags. Short of leaving radioactive craters where those hell-holes are presently operating, improving the content of the curriculum to reflect the facts of reality - people are afflicted with religious beliefs, many of them are systematized, and the influences of those religious systems have been responsible for results both beneficial and bloody throughout the experience of the human race - can't help but be an improvement on what the "Liberals" keep screwing our kids with.

But as science? -

"It is a truism that almost any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so, and will follow it by suppressing opposition, subverting all education to seize early the minds of the young, and by killing, locking up, or driving underground all heretics." [Robert A. Heinlein]

Ummm... those 'blue laws' you quote were states' laws in effect from the very beginning of our country, which, contrary to our President's belief, was begun as Christian-Judeo. Our federal laws were based on the 10 Commandments and the civil laws which were put in place in Moses' time. The 'blue' laws are, and have been, phased out over the past 60-70 years. (I know when I was a child no store was open on a Sunday, let alone on Christmas.) As far as I know, most of the laws pertaining to infidelity, fornication, or homosexuality have been removed. There may still be a few around, but they're not enforced, and, more to the point, there have been no 'blue' laws imposed since then, certainly not in the last 50 or so years.

As far as the 'Whackjobs' who want to have creationism taught in the schools, I'm sorry, but I'm one of them... at least I'd like to have it taught along with the religion of Darwinism. Both views are by faith, but with science's recent strides in DNA information, the former makes far more sense than the latter. And yes, as science.

I do understand, if you were brought up in the parochial school system, you were never encouraged (in fact were probably actively discouraged) to read your Bible. If you had [read your Bible] you might have had some questions that could have been better answered by a pastor or a Bible-grounded friend. Better yet, by Jesus Himself.

http://www.lewrockwell.com/ Tuci78

Ah, because the blue laws I'd mentioned were "states' laws in effect from the very beginning of our country" (some of 'em have been county and municipal codes, by the way), they're not religiously-driven limitations upon the freedoms of those of us who don't hew to that peculiar species of whackjobbery?

Besides, you asked me to "name one law that those 'divisive religious whackjobs' have imposed" on me, and I am old enough to have experienced such idiot laws, including ones in which sections of stores open on Sundays were roped off to prevent people from purchasing the whackjob-proscribed products.

Truly spectacular meddlesome religious idiots' stupidity.

Heavens to little donuts, do you godstruck gophers ever even try to voice a reasoned argument? Would you recognize one if you stumbled across it?

Having knowledge of the religious wars that had rampaged through Europe during the 16th and 17th Centuries, the American thinkers of the 18th Century - who were educated in the principles articulated by the previously mentioned Enlightenment philosophers - made conscious determination to create a secular federal republic that neither favored nor debilitated anyone on the basis of personal conscience.

Heck, even you religious whackjobs ought to be aware of the Treaty of Tripoli (1797), negotiated under President Washington and signed into effect in the administration of President John Adams, in which we find Article 11 specifying: -

As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion,—as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquility, of Mussulmen [Muslims],—and as the said States never entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mahometan /b>[Muslim] nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.

-

Ratified by the Senate, signed by President Adams, and withal a simple reflection of the facts of reality. The republic is a secular state, no matter what the Founders might've used as models upon which to base the structure of the Constitution and the laws enacted thereunder.

Heck, the Founders also took as their templates entirely pagan Roman law, and looked into the structure of the Iroquois Confederacy's constitution - "The Great Law of Peace" - in order to structure our charter of civil government.

So are we then a pagan nation revering the Lares and Penates protecting the Roman family and the Roman state? Or a nation based on worship of the Great Spirit?

As for your hammering idiocy about "the religion of Darwin," what better proof could you have given that you don't know the difference between science and religion, between objective fact and godstruck delusion?

"...creationists ridicule evolution for being only a theory, but a theory ranks near the epitome of scientific model accomplishment."

-

Though concerned rather more to condemn the "crippled conjecture" of anthropogenic global warming (AGW) Dr. Glassman went on to write: -

"But many more citizens will be acutely interested in whether their school board puts 'intelligent design' into its grade school curriculum or into its text book criteria, and how. And a majority of citizens will be personally affected should the United States adopt the Kyoto Accord. Here the charlatans and demagogues are trying to exploit the public vulnerability created by a public school system that has replaced science and mathematics with recycling and self-esteem curricula.

The notion of intelligent design belongs in the public school program. The science curriculum should show that, because science builds on facts (measurements compared to standards as explained above) and because God and the supernatural can never be measured but must remain mysterious and otherworldly, intelligent design and creationism are matters of faith, not science. To a scientist–believer, science takes the measure of what God appears to have done, not of God. Science can never figure out what size Birkenstock God takes."

-

The purpose of a conceptual model - an abstract reflection of objective reality - is to explain observed phenomena as to their character, including causation and effects. At the various levels of tested validity (conjecture through law, as parsimoniously explained by Dr. Glassman)... -

"A theory is a hypothesis with at least one nontrivial validating datum."

-

...Darwin's theory stands as the basis for an explanation of how real things have happened in the real world.

This is something your whackjob "creationism" - or "intelligent design" or however it's being foisted this week - does not do, instead making appeal to the supernatural.

Actually, I think you're being a little disingenuous. As your statement was that the Christian Whackjobs were trying to push their morality laws onto you, I asked you to name one law. In my mind, I was thinking of the current time in which we live, at least in the past 60 years, and I believe you knew that. But of course I didn't stipulate it, and when you named the blue laws I was trying to say that they were enacted two hundred-plus years ago based on the original lawmakers' beliefs and right or wrong, most of the blue laws are gone now. What you might have wanted to purchase on a Sunday in your youth is available to you now. If you decide to have an affair with your neighbor no one is going to put you in stocks. The point I was trying to make is that most of us Christians don't want to impose ourselves on you... as I mentioned in a further post reply, we'll tell you about Christ's love for you, not because we want to hammer it into you, but because we care, and we don't want anyone to suffer damnation.

Sometimes Christians do come across as Whackjobs, but it's not due to our belief in Jesus Christ. Whackjobbery can be across the board (look at Debbie Wasserman Schultz).

If, as you claim, Darwin's Theory "stands as the basis for an explanation of how real things have happened in the real world", it doesn't do a very good job of it. There are so many holes in it that believers have had to concoct several fake instances to explain inconsistencies (Piltdown Man, anyone?). Just using common sense tells us that things don't evolve upward, but if you need a scientific explanation, the second law of thermodynamics, aka entropy, tells us pretty much the same thing.

So here's the bottom line: I'm not telling you what to believe, and I don't think you're a Whackjob, either, just because we don't see eye to eye. God gave us all free will. Okay, that was my little joke. But truly, try to have a little more open-mindedness about our belief in God.

http://www.lewrockwell.com/ Tuci78

Darwin's theory of evolution does, indeed, have "holes in it" as originally advanced, but there have not yet been any presentations of evidence to disprove the concept - that speciation develops from ancestral forms to achieve better exploitation of environmental conditions - and in fact all evidence gathered continues to support the explanation of how and why old species become extinct and new species appear.

It's not that things are supposed to "evolve upward," but that ecological niches tend to favor with reproductive fitness - increased rates of propagation - those characteristics in organisms which provide greatest adaptive capacities.

Wanna talk about infectious diseases sometime? Look up "MRSA."

As for Piltdown Man, Ms. Wright, I now begin to doubt that you're capable of shame as well as reason. Piltdown Man was nothing more or less than a hoax, deliberately constructed to sucker the solemn asses of the English "natural history" scene in the early 20th Century. The poor boobs so desperately wanted to find some support for their conjectures about the appearance of brain size in the early protohuman evolutionary line, and - of course - they wanted it to be a British protohuman that demonstrated "missing link" qualification.

Plain old-fashioned chauvinism.

Of course, from the very beginning there were critics skeptical of the Piltdown Man whoop-te-do, just as there have been many in the sciences skeptical of the preposterous bogosity of "man-made global warming" - or is it "climate change" again this week? - ever since that crap started getting shoveled back in the late '70s.

Your contention "...that most of us Christians don't want to impose ourselves on you.." is given less weight than the proverbial angel's footprint by the fact that every flaming time you "Christians" grope your way to political power, you strive to jam your smelly sanctity down the unbeliever's throat with all possible vigor.

See Mr. Heinlein's observation above.

Being historically literate, I do not forget that the late 19th Century and early decades of the 20th made up an era of Christian socialism manifesting throughout the progressive movement upon which our modern "Liberals" predicate most of their nanny-state meddlesomeness, as well as the concept of "the moral equivalent of war" leading to Johnson's "War on Poverty," Nixon's "War on Drugs," and Dubbya's "War on Terror."

In which no American is allowed peaceably to declare himself a non-combatant, and none of which is it ever remotely possible to win, thus far noting that Poverty, Drugs, and Terror seem to be hammering along harder than ever.

That you modern Christian social conservatives and the "Liberal" fascists are at each others' throats is not unexpected.

You're both peddling irrationality, and as the old proverb goes, "two of a trade seldom agree."

Hmmm... using the word "hoax" tends to indicate an elaborate joke of some sort. As the Piltdown Man skull was introduced by Clarence Darrow in 1925 as defense for John Scopes, I think a better word would be "fraud". (How strange to think that now creationism can't be taught in schools... I'm assuming you think that it serves us Whackjobs right for trying to suppress Darwin's theory in the first place.) I wonder if, in another 75 or 80 years, the schools will have done a 180 and stopped requiring that only Darwin be taught? Or reversed the requirement of teaching that homosexuality is just an alternate lifestyle, Mother Earth is to be revered, all people of ethnic backgrounds are good but white people are bad, and prayer in school can never ever be allowed? The pendulum swung really far to the left, so I can only hope it will start coming back.

And where is that missing link?

I also do not forget the 'nanny-state meddlesomeness' (good phrase, btw) of Johnson's War on Poverty (which was right in the middle of a real war going on in Vietnam) but I cannot for the life of me see how you can combine that social progressive movement with "Christian socialism" which is an oxymoron. As a Christian I believe in doing good personally, not taxing people so that the collected monies can be distributed by a self-satisfied group of politicians patting themselves on the back for being the distributor of largess to the poor. All that does is keep the poor poor. As a retiree I personally volunteer, as well as give money, to various organizations that help the poor. I spend the majority of my time around other Christians, so I do feel qualified to give a Christian viewpoint, and we are NOT in any way socialists OR fascists. NONE of us are trying to force anyone to give money or do anything else that they don't wish to do. Personally, I think you're protesting how evil/stupid/whacko Christians are because it gives you a reason not to believe.

http://www.lewrockwell.com/ Tuci78

Nope. Your scientific illiteracy is as glaring as your religious whackjobbery. Piltdown Man was a hoax - "deliberately fabricated falsehood made to masquerade as truth" - perpetrated by a party or parties unknown to mess with the "natural philosophers" of Great Britain in 1912, and despite skeptical critique applied throughout the decades, it was not accepted widely to have been a hoax until 1953.

A "fraud" has another meaning entirely, being "an intentional deception made for personal gain or to damage another individual." To the best of anyone's knowledge, the Piltdown Man hoaxer(s) didn't make a farthing out of their fabrication. Their compensation came in making the hifalutin' British "natural history" establishment the most embarrassing object lesson in Cargo Cult Science in the history of scientific investigation.

That lawyer Clarence Darrow tried to introduce Piltdown Man "in 1925 as defense for John Scopes" in the justly famous Monkey Trial was nothing more than a scientific layman going with what was then accepted credulously by anthropologists as good evidence of a premise they really, really wanted to receive.

This doubtless sticks in your religious whackjob mind because the Scopes Trial made you anti-evolution clods look so spectacularly stupid that you became the subjects of ridicule throughout the civilized world, and you've never quite recovered from it.

You go right on wondering "if, in another 75 or 80 years, the schools will have done a 180 and stopped requiring that only Darwin be taught." To make that happen, there will have to be a body of evidence - tested by extremely skeptical reviewers who are all aware of how their 1912-1953 predecessors got burned - to support a contrary conjecture to explain the old evidence as well as the new stuff, and thus far there ain't the least trace of a hint of a shadow of an intimation thereof.

If it's any consolation to you (I suspect you're a hapless mundane as well as a religious whackjob), alternatives to Darwin's theory as applied to human evolution has long been a subject of entertaining speculation in "hard" science fiction. Check out the late James Hogan's Giants series of novels (1977 through 2005), in which the science really isn't all that plausible, but it's a lot of fun.

The Kulturkampf buncombe is pure blart-and-bonkus, and not predicated on anything but willful bushwah among the "liberal arts" and "social science" clowns. We've had them with us forever. For a quick dip in how such stuff has dribbled through American culture for about a century (at least), find a copy of Patrick Dennis' novel Auntie Mame (1955) - forget about the play and the movies; they're transparent phantoms by comparison against the original - and understand that his descriptions of la vie Bohème in New York the Damned during the late '20s and 1930s were pretty much a correct reflection of how things were going on among the "Liberal" nutcases with pretensions of sophistication.

Religious whackjobs - being culturally illiterate as well - tend to look back on recent times and think the decadence of the sexual and social heretics somehow harrowingly exceptional. It ain't.

Religious whackjobs in these United States stirred their stumps with great agitation around issues such as "social injustice," and were prominent in all the progressive crap that led America into the economic catastrophe called the New Deal.

Mostly Protestants, but I regret to say that Catholics were not wholly immune to this idiocy.

"Personally, I think you're protesting how evil/stupid/whacko Christians are because it gives you a reason not to believe."

No, I'm observing religious whackjobbery because it's a robust kind of psychopathology with profound adverse effects in all societies and polities. As H.L. Mencken (political and intellectual enemy of William Jennings Bryan) once put it: -

"No, there is nothing notably dignified about religious ideas. They run, rather, to a peculiarly puerile and tedious kind of nonsense. At their best, they are borrowed from metaphysicians, which is to say, from men who devote their lives to proving that twice two is not always or necessarily four. At their worst, they smell of spiritualism and fortune-telling. Nor is there any visible virtue in the men who merchant them professionally. Few theologians know anything that is worth knowing, even about theology, and not many of them are honest. One may forgive a Communist of a Single Taxer on the ground that there is something the matter with his ductless glands, and that a Winter in the south of France would relieve him. But the average theologian is a hearty, red-faced, well-fed fellow with no discernible excuse in pathology. He disseminates his blather, not innocently, like a philosopher, but maliciously, like a politician. In a well-organized world he would be on the stone-pile. But in the world as it exists we are asked to listen to him, not only politely, but even reverently, and with our mouths open."

http://www.facebook.com/williekmcd Bill Mcdonald

Go find a street-corner and a soap box. You just like seeing your words on screen rather than a give and take discourse..

http://www.lewrockwell.com/ Tuci78

Aw, whine, whine, whine.

There's the yammer of a clod who can't write - or reason - to save his pitiful excuse for a life. -

“To sing, to laugh, to dream, to walk in my own way and be alone, free, with an eye to see things as they are, a voice that means manhood — to cock my hat where I choose —

At a word, a Yes, a No, to fight — or write. To travel any road under the sun, under the stars, nor doubt if fame or fortune lie beyond the bourne

Never to make a line I have not heard in my own heart; yet, with all modesty to say: "My soul, be satisfied with flowers, with fruit, with weeds even; but gather them in the one garden you may call your own.”

[Edmond Rostand, Cyrano De Bergerac (1897)]

http://www.facebook.com/williekmcd Bill Mcdonald

If you had a parochial education, and you've a problem with that, I suggest you direct your focus at your parents.

http://www.lewrockwell.com/ Tuci78

Sorry to disappoint you Mr. Mcdonald. Being a grandfather (and a great-grandfather) myself, I'm of an age at which - as might be anticipated - my parents are both deceased.

What, no sympathy for an orphan?

How "Christian."

PoorPitifulPearl

It's not the religious who are the whackjobs and causing divisiveness...it's the folks who, unlike you, want relgion out of everything and cannot stand it if someone has religious faith or preferences. Otherwise, were it not for them and the ACLU, we'd all be getting along just fine together. You have a right to disbelieve, and I have a right to believe, and we both should be upholding each other's rights! Okay?

http://www.lewrockwell.com/ Tuci78

Not "out of everything," Pearl. Just out of government.

To paraphrase P.J. O'Rourke, "Never let the people with all the [religious insanity] and the people with all the guns be the same people."

I can "stand it" just fine "if someone has religious faith or preferences." Just keep your frelkin' hands to yourselves while you're dovening or genuflecting or writhing in religious ecstasy or speaking in tongues or whatever suits your peculiar brand of Protestant heresy.

I can't uphold your "right to believe" because such belief happens in your own mind, and nobody can prevent you from believing.

What I'm happy to do is exercise my right to self-defense - with lethal force, if necessary - in the extension of protection for you and your co-religionists whenever your right to liberty is infringed by anyone violating the public peace, and that emphatically includes the officers of government.

After all, they get you, it's likely that they'll be coming after me and mine soon thereafter. I'd rather stop them on your doorstep than waif for them to come mess up my front lawn.

The Second Amendment, after all, isn't to protect our ability to hunt charismatic megafauna, shoo off crows, or even deter freelance criminals.

It's to enable us to do what the citizens of Lexington did in 1775: shoot the soldiers of our own government when that agency violates the law.

LeSellers

The whole idea that a business owner loses his personal rights the second he opens his doors to the public is blatantly outrageous.

I can't hire whom I want to work for me, I must hire according to the schedule the state imposes. I can't deny service to whomever I want to because that's discrimination. I can't do this, I must do that. Not to mention that I also collect taxes from my customers, my employees and my own bank account, fill out enormous piles of paper work at my own expense.

Becoming a business owner should not equate to becoming an unpaid employee of the state.

If I decide, as a business man, to restrict my clientele to, say, sinistrals (left-handed people — no charge for the word of the day), why should it matter to anyone buyt me and my accountant? After all, first, it's my business, and second, by denying myself revenue from dextrals*, I am harming myself. And that is my right, my affair. * Right-handers — I am charging 5¢ for this one, though.

If I determine it is my best interest to reject money from atheists or red heads or Chinese actors, why is that the government's concern? In a legitimate world, it would not be. But we do not live in a legitimate world: ours is controlled by self-righteous politicians and other whores.

Mr. O'bama, where are the Jobs?

Nadine

If there are any jobs they'll be going to all the ILLEGALs he just allowed in OUR country! Time to go OBUMMER!

PoorPitifulPearl

Not only am I sinistral, but had red hair as a child...Do the discounts cancel each other out? Just kidding, LeSellers...I like what you had to say, and uphold your right to say it!

Screeminmeeme

I'm immensely happy that small business owners are taking a stand against Obama's policies.

Bernie

I was in WalMart the other day, behind a woman who paid her checkout bill of $400 (heard it from the check out girl) with food stamps. I only had a few items and was through quickly. As I went to my car (2004 Mercury) I was astounded to see this woman loading up a new Volvo!

http://www.facebook.com/linda.watrous.98 Linda Watrous

I'm loving this stand up for what is right approach. It's time we tell the the liberal left groups that this is still a free nation and we will not stand with the ones that hate our nation and want to destroy it.

http://www.lewrockwell.com/ Tuci78

It's not so much "our nation" that they hate, but rather (and I don't wanna sound too much like Dubbya here...) our freedom.

As long as the average American citizen is conscious of his unalienable individual rights - to life, to liberty, to property, and to the means of defending these rights - the "Liberals" haven't won the prize they desire, which is not only the pillage of a whole helpless, bleeding nation but also the ability to command our productive abilities to serve them and their purposes. -

"Generally the more energy that is available to any given individual in any given society, the more individual liberty there is in that society. That is probably the reason why authoritarian, collectivist governments (if you'll pardon a redundancy) adopt mythologies that claim energy is scarce or will soon be.

"Nor is the essentially fascistic environmentalist movement at all interested in cheaper, cleaner energy or greater human freedom. Their goal is to round up all of humanity in vertical concentration camps called 'arcologies', forcibly reduce the population, mostly by lowering the quality and standard of living, clear the countryside (the way the British did in Scotland in the 18th and 19th centuries), and let it 'return to nature' — except, of course, for the dachas of the nomenklatura and their more attractive and compliant peasant slaves.

"If billions must die to achieve this Utopian dream, so much the better."

the Obama regime doesn't know what they are in for in Nov. It will be a like Chick-fila overload, they won't know what hit them. We will leave them dazed and confused. There won't be a liberal left standing when we finish with them. It will be a like 2010 only better.

annie get your gun

You are right on Linda. I too am sick & tired of these no 'count low lifes that wouldn't work in a pie shop. They totally live off of the system!! Most of these low lifes are more able to work than I am.

I commend all of these businesses that are standing up to the libtards, athiests, homos, and their "hot air" lawyers that put their two cent worth in also. I agree with the owner of the water park, if the athiests have a problem with them giving discounts to Christians, build your own water park.

The Cisco Kid

Agree to the "needy" and not the "greedy"!!! This great State of Texas needs to review its policies and investigate its "food stamp" dept. employees, using more favoritism than proper judgement in granting sufficient food stamps to honest tax payers rather than granting illegals and/or dishonest applicants the food stamps they have not earned or deserve.

libssuck

Attaching the food stamps program to the farm bill and than trying to increase the food stamp program (full of waste, fraud and abuse ) to buy more votes. Responsible law makers say no, Obama says Republicans wont help our struggling farmers and pass the farm bill, deception and dishonesty, enough already.

Evermyrtle

You know, we do have a choice, which is it? Stand or fold? I think we have been folding, far too long it is time we stand up against these bullies, we must if we expect to survive!!.

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1433003812 Tim Eggert

Handing out everything to lazy people will not get them to work. If you deny it to them and they want it bad enough, they will work or do without. The desire to want something bad enough to work for it is called incentive. That is how the rich got rich, they wanted it bad enough and worked hard for it.

http://www.survivingurbancrisis.com/ Silas Longshot

The man's right, folks. If you don't stand up to a bully, even if you get knocked down, they may leave you alone next time. Or, being the typical cowards they are, may fear gettin' a good azzwhoopin' because you're not afraid of them, standing up for yourself.

http://www.lewrockwell.com/ Tuci78

The problem is that our Fraudulence-in-Chief plays by "Chicago Rules."

Remember that movie, The Untouchables?

However the private citizenry resist him, the Miracle Mulatto Marxist Messiah will up the ante without conscience, shame, or mercy.

He will kill every third one of us - heck, every second one of us - if he thinks it will enable him to hang onto the power he has so psychopathologically craved all his evil, narcissistic, utterly corrupt little life.

kelso

A stupid non story only Fox News covers. Sure poor business owner, she's so brave. Gimme a break and talk about something with substance.

http://www.lewrockwell.com/ Tuci78

It's a married couple, and yeah, they are brave.

Consider that under the command of our Usurper-in-Chief is the I.R.S., the most powerful domestic terrorist organization in these United States.